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Mjadara Hamra (Red Lentils with bulgur wheat)

If you don’t like onions click away now 😱 everyone else jump for joy. Mjadara Hamra, which roughly translates as ‘red lentils’, is my most favourite lentil dish and is based on cooking lentils in lots and lots and lots of onions until they are so dark, one step before being burnt. When I first started making it I had to dare myself to keep frying the onions one step further because my brain was going surely this isn’t right. You need to have patience to pull this dish off, you can’t fry the onions at too high a heat or the onions will burn right away and you can’t have the heat too low or they will caramelise and the overall flavour will be too sweet. You need to fry the onions at a medium heat for as long as it takes and keep turning them so they don’t catch on one side. You are going for a wonderfully savoury umami flavour although if you find the onion intensity is too much you can cook it for ten minutes less which will give it a lighter colour. Make sure you use brown lentils not the green or red ones which won’t give the same results. Traditionally, coarse bulgur wheat is added to the lentils 15 minutes before you turn off the heat, although my mum (forever the culinary rebel) sometimes uses Turkish bulgur wheat which is even chunkier and gives it a nice texture.

This dish is a testament to the ingenuity of our maternal ancestors who could manipulate the most basic ingredients (onions,lentils, bulgur wheat) into something exceptional. I’ve yet to meet a Lebanese person who doesn’t love this dish. If you go to your aunty’s house and she’s made mjadara hamra, everyone gets happy, i’m not even exaggerating. You can eat it hot or cold with side plate of salad or cucumber and yoghurt and it also makes perfect picnic food or pack lunch. Though my recipe is enough to feed a family of six, it will keep for at least three days, though of course in my house it is gone the next day and we mourn a little until the next time 😌

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....or as we Lebanese say; Ahla w Sehla! :)
Here you'll find recipes collected from my Lebanese Mama, some regional classics and some secret family recipes. I come from a family of exceptional home cooks and I don't think I even went to a proper restaurant until I went to college, whereby I tried everything only to realise I'd been raised on gourmet food without even knowing it. My Teta (grandmother) was a legendary cook from Lebanon who could rustle up a feast out of nothing. My mother too ...